


Definitions

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [16]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alt: Comfort, Day 16, Emotional trauma comes to visit, Referenced Child Abuse, Someone please hug Riley, Whumptober 2020, Yes the US government really does torture its own recruits, flash backs, past trauma, referenced domestic abuse, riley centric, sere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27045364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Riley goes to SERE training and it brings up some old memories.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 15
Kudos: 32
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Definitions

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love!!

“Riley, you won’t be joining Mac and Jack on this assignment,” Director Thornton says curtly. 

Riley’s eyebrows shoot up. Mac knows she’s been a bit uneasy with this whole arrangement, waiting for the day when they found someone better and sent her back to prison for the rest of her sentence. 

“I’m not?” Riley asks cautiously.

“If you’re going to continue to operate in the field, you need proper training. You’re going to SERE, Level C,” the director explains.

“Oooh. Ouch,” Jack says, wrinkling up his nose.

Mac clicks his tongue in agreement. “Sorry, Riles. You’ll survive it, though.”

“What’s SERE? Why is this bad?” 

Mac can hear the rising panic is her voice and leans forward out his chair to put a hand on her knee. “Hey, it’s a training camp for high value military personnel and some select civilians. SERE stands for survive, evade, resist, escape. It’s all about how to operate behind enemy lines. It’s a really tough course, but you’ll learn a lot.”

“So then why are you guys already handing out condolence cards?” Riley demands.

“Because,” Thornton interjects, “Level C is for the highest value targets meaning it’s the toughest course, particularly in the area of resistance. In this particular school, you won’t have to complete too much wilderness training as the course is mostly geared towards Code of Conduct and resistance.”

“Resistance to what?” Riley asks, her eyes wide.

“Torture, Riles,” Jack answers. “They’re gonna put you in some unpleasant and scary situations, some of it will hurt, but you’ll come out better and stronger than you went in. Mac and I both did Level C because of our assignments.”

Mac nods, hoping to allay some of the fears that they might have already stoked a bit too high. “I can’t talk to you about it in specifics, but we can go over some of the generalities before you go.”

Riley looks like her anxiety is starting to decrease but Director Thornton cuts back in. “Actually, she’s due on base at 0700 tomorrow morning, and you gentlemen are wheels up in thirty. Everyone’s bags are packed as needed in the ready room. Riley, there’s a car waiting for you in the parking deck; it will take you to the airport. Dismissed.”

They all hurry down to the ready room, checking and double checking their belongings, though Riley’s not really sure what she’s looking for. Jack claps her on the shoulder and smiles. Riley glares.

“Look, I know you hate me. That’s fair. But I’m telling you, you’re gonna do great, probably better than all those little whiny babies that think they’re spec ops material. You just go in there. Learn, use your brain, and be the tough lady you’ve always been, and you’ll do great,” Jack says.

Riley’s glare softens. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Do you want a hug for the road? You’ll need one by the time this is over,” Jack says, opening his arms encouragingly.

The glare returns. “I’m not that desperate, but thanks.”

Mac smiles. There’s hope for the two of them yet. “You want a hug from me? Jack’s right, one for the road will do you good.”

Riley accepts Mac’s offer and puts her face on his shoulder. He knows her life has been turned upside down more times than she can count lately, and their attempts at good natured ribbing about going to SERE clearly weren’t as funny as they’d hoped. 

They part and go their separate ways, but Mac just keeps thinking about her time in prison. It’s evident to everyone that Riley went through some shit during those two years, and going back to a detention facility, even a fake one, is probably going to freak her out. He should have warned her. Instead, all he can do is hope she doesn’t wash out.

*****

Riley taps her pencil against the table while the sergeant or whoever, lectures about the Code of Conduct. She couldn’t give a lesser fuck about all this patriotism shit. The government fucked her over royally and now they’re trying to use her for their own goals. She’s glad to be out of prison, but she’s not gonna be waving old glory anytime soon. 

“Cadet Davis, is there a reason you’re tapping your pencil?” the instructor shouts.

Riley sits up straight, sighing quietly through her nose. “Sorry, sir.”

“Cadet, you’re obviously a civilian. What agency did you say you were with?”

Riley sets her pencil down to avoid tapping it again. “I didn’t. That’s sensitive compartmentalized information.” She might not care how the government operates, but she damn sure knows the lingo to keep herself free and clear.

A couple of the young men in front of her turn around to see her, and they exchange wary looks as though Riley might make them disappear with her super secret covert agency magic. She glares.

“I’m going to guess that you don’t work a lot in military settings,” he asks.

“This is the first time I’ve been on a military installation,” Riley answers.

The man nods. “The military has strict expectations regarding conduct, not only in the situations you’ll encounter in this course, but also in everyday life. Respect, focus, dedication — all of these traits are imperative to your success in your field, whatever it may be. With that in mind, don’t tap your pencil in my class. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Riley answers as though she’s conceding something. 

_Fuck,_ she thinks. This is just like prison all over again.

*****

“Cold?” asks one of her classmates. 

Riley side eyes him as they trudge through the forest. “It’s eight degrees out, there’s two feet of snow on the ground, and I’m only wearing one pair of socks. You tell me.”

Several of the guys in her class chuckle.

“You don’t work outside very much do you?” asks another. 

Riley shakes her head and thinks of the gray cinder block walls of her old cell. “Not much for a few years now.”

“Technology?” asks a third.

Riley likes these guys for the most part. They’re young and probably still measuring their dicks in the bathroom, but they’re at least polite to her which is more than she hoped for when she showed up.

“That’s sens-”

“-itive compartmentalized information,” the entire group of ten finishes at once. 

She laughs. Now they’re getting it.

*****

A week and a half of class work, a week of fucking around in the woods like someone from The Hills Have Eyes, and now this. Riley is so not having this shit. They had made it exactly three days in their evasion unit which Riley felt was pretty stellar, but then that stupid dog found them and it was over.

Part of her was glad for the respite. They had stopped only a couple of hours at a time to rest and always being on the run was physically and emotionally draining. The hood over her head wasn’t terribly concerning, being literally thrown into the back of a cargo truck wasn’t great, being cuffed and shackled was nothing special, but walking into a prison all over again is what finally makes Riley balk. She can’t help the way her feet stutter and she stumbles. Rough hands catch her before she can fall and pull her back up, dragging her again on her way.

_It’s all pretend,_ she reminds herself. _I get to go home in three more days._ But the smell of the industrial cleaners makes her entire body tense and immediately she wants to cry.

She’s stripped, cavity searched, and given prisoners’ clothes. Riley tells herself that of all of them, she can survive this portion the best. Out in the field, she was exhausted, slow, not in “just got out of boot camp” shape like the rest of her cohort. Here, Riley knows how to handle guards, she knows how to wait. But just like when she first went to prison, Riley doesn’t feel like she can. She feels helpless, alone, and scared.

*****

“Who’s your commanding officer?” the interrogator asks again. 

Riley looks past the man to the far wall of the room and says nothing. They’ve been at this for what feels like ten hours but is probably more like two. Her stomach rumbles and she yawns.

Without warning, she’s hooded again and dragged from the interrogation room back to a cell where she’s shackled to the wall. She’s still hungry and she’s got to pee but she hasn’t done anything to earn a bathroom break yet apparently. 

She wonders how Mac and Jack’s mission went. Last time she checked in, they were still on radio silence but that was almost two weeks ago. Surely, they’re home by now, heck, they might have gone out again already. 

Riley’s arms start to ache from the position of her hands and she tries to readjust but there’s no slack in her shackles whatsoever. She tries to think about pad thai and egg rolls, fried rice and cream cheese wontons, but her stomach only growls louder and her arms go from aching to agonizing. She just wants to sleep, even if it happens while she’s standing up, but guards come by and flick water at her or scream in her face if she falls asleep, and now she hurts too much to sleep anyway.

*****

Her head pounds from hunger and sleep deprivation and the loud music they keep playing, but between growing up hungry in the hood and living in prison, this is just another fucking Tuesday, or whatever day of the week it is. But if they think this is the shit that’s gonna break her, they got another thing coming. 

They drag her outside and strip her again, this time in front of her classmates, several of whom are already stripped, and then hose the whole group down. It’s still cold, though the snow on the ground has started to melt just a little. Apparently, being above freezing for five minutes is a sign that whatever the hell this torturous shit is has become acceptable. 

Fuck the water hurts. It’s so cold, it’s like knives against her skin and her whole body shakes painfully, the hurt magnified by the fact that her muscles still burn from being shackled. Someone gets in her face, screaming at her, slapping her across the cheek again and again. 

Riley barely listens to him. She sits there and focuses on the concrete. He grabs her roughly by the lower jaw, maneuvering her so they’re face to face, like he wants eye contact, but Riley doesn’t have to do that. She doesn’t have to do anything. 

Eventually, he must realize she’s not going to respond to him because he grabs the young private that’s knelt next to her, his teeth chattering violently. The guards drag him across the yard and push him into a pit full of water. His head stays above the surface but he’s in the water up to his neck. Even from across the yard she can see the pain on his face because if the water coming from the hose hurts, the water in the pit must be agonizing. 

The instructor gets in her face, tells her she needs to look at what she’s done. It’s her fault, doesn’t she know that? But how many times did Elwood say the same damn shit? How many times did she hear him scream that while he beat her mom? It wasn’t her fault then and it’s not her fault now. 

It’s cold. It’s so cold and Riley feels tired. She wants to sleep. If they’d let her, she’d lie down on the concrete right here and pass out. But no such luck. About the time the cold stops mattering, they haul her up and drag her back inside. It’s warm and her body burns. The numb of the cold turns to pins and needles and she grits her teeth against the pain.

They shackle her to the wall again, her arms and legs already on fire. And when one of them slams her into the wall, she laughs. She feels like she’s eight years old again, a mouthful of blood, her little body burning with rage, hitting Elwood with the plastic wiffleball bat she got for Christmas while he pounds on her mother. 

They think they’ll break her, but she knows something they don’t. You can’t break what’s already broken.

*****

The flight and subsequent drive to the training center is full of tension but neither of them is willing to talk about it. Mac knows Jack blames himself for what happened to Riley — all the “what ifs” and “could have beens” if he hadn’t left. And now here’s Riley, going to SERE in a situation that they both know is going to bring up a lot of trauma. Mac just hopes that whatever happens, she doesn’t wash out; he doesn’t want to see her sent back to prison because Director Thornton won’t overlook this.

They clear the checkpoints to the training center and park outside to wait. Despite their own post-training celebrations, and the mountains of Mexican food they ate afterwards, Mac knows this won’t be like that. Riley isn’t going through this with teammates and she’s not going home with them either. 

Finally, the doors open and a couple dozen young guys, and a couple gals including Riley, come out. She’s chatting with several of them and even exchanges hugs goodbye before scanning the parking lot for her ride from the Phoenix. Mac sees her face light up the moment she recognizes them.

“Mac! Jack!” she shouts, waving at them, and hurries across the parking lot. 

Mac scoops her up in a hug, glad to see her looking healthy and not at all like she just spent a couple weeks in the woods and then three more days being sleep deprived and lightly tortured. 

“Well how was it?” Jack asks, extending his hand. 

Riley looks at him a moment and takes it in her own. “It sucked so hard. I wanna eat like seven thousand cinnabons and sleep for the next month. No more trapped rabbit or squirrel.”

Mac and Jack laugh, and they all pile into the little late model Chevy Impala. 

“Alright, you’re the woman of the hour, Riles. You wanna get to the nearest gas station with a Cinnabon kiosk?” Jack asks.

“Or do you wanna go out to eat with the rest of the students?” Mac asks. He rarely got along with the other guys in any situation — he was too weird and they were too brash. But there were times he was glad to be with them and after SERE was definitely one of them. They all went out to eat, packing away three entrees each and racking up bar tabs that no one wanted to think about. That night they were all in it together. It had been nice to have that closure, to know that they all walked away together from what was definitely one of the least pleasant experiences in most of their lives.

“Oh, good god, please no,” she says with a laugh. “Some of them are nice but we have nothing in common and it’s hard to make conversation with people when you can’t talk about your life or where you work or why you’re at some super secret spy camp.”

Jack nods, “That’s fair enough. So cinnabons or something else?”

“Cinnabons,” Riley says definitively. 

Mac smiles and checks on her in the rearview mirror. She seems fine and Mac wonders if he just over thought this whole thing. She’s been through a lot; he knows he ought to give her more credit.

*****

They’ve got a few days off. Jack had wheedled Thornton for an extended weekend to allow Riley to decompress, and miraculously, it was granted. Now they’re headed west to Bainbridge Island. They snagged a cozy little Airbnb on the water and it’s just the thing to let her relax. Get some take out, wrap up all warm and cozy, and just chill.

Okay, well, actually that sounds like hell to Mac. He’d be bored out of his mind, which is why he brought three textbooks, a laptop with all of the Phoenix’s academic library logins, a programmable breadboard kit that Bozer got him for Christmas, and his running shoes. But Riley’s not like him and she’ll love it.

And six hours later, factoring in pit stops and a Cinnabon detour, they’ve arrived. “Oh my god, guys? Did you really book this? For three days?”

Jack smiles and nods. “Sure did. Thought you might need a chance to rest up without the DXS being all up your butt.”

She smiles at Jack, the first time she’s ever done that that Mac’s seen. “Thank you, Jack. And thank you, Mac. This place is awesome!”

Between the three of them, it takes an embarrassing five minutes to get the damn realtor lock on the door to open up. Jack offers to shoot it, Riley’s just mad she can’t hack it, and Mac left his lock pick kit at home. They’re instead reduced to calling the host and talking through the situation. 

“This is humiliating. I just left spy school and we’re standing out here like we’re a bunch of inept high school students,” Riley mutters.

“Man, you’re telling me. My balls are hiding behind my liver they’re so cold right now,” Jack grumbles. 

“Jack, you and I both know my mom probably has your balls in a glass jar somewhere,” Riley snarks.

“Oh, honey you got no idea,” Jack says.

“We’re in,” Mac finally announces, and it’s immediately a fight to see who can get inside first.

The place really is nice, Mac concedes to himself. He’s split the cost with Jack but still argued that it was ridiculous to charge that much per night. But the look on Riley’s face coupled with how the pictures really didn’t do it justice, makes Mac rethink his position. 

They get their things inside and change into their pajamas. Jack orders dinner, but by the time it arrives, Riley’s out cold on the sofa. 

“I remember being tired for a week after SERE,” Jack says quietly.

Mac nods. “It felt like I’d never recover my sleep debt. And everything hurt for weeks. I don’t envy her at all right now.”

Jack shakes his head. “No, me either. But she’s gonna make one helluva field agent.”

“Already does,” Mac counters.

And Jack nods, idly spinning his pad thai noodles around his fork.

*****

They clean up from dinner and pile a couple more blankets on Riley before turning in themselves. The bedrooms are on the second floor, right over the dining area where Riley’s asleep on the sofa. Mac stares out the window for a long time, watching the twinkling lights across the harbor, before eventually falling asleep. 

In the morning, he wakes refreshed. Years of travel and sleep in less comfortable accommodations means that Mac can sleep in most places without the usual fitfulness people seem to get while traveling. 

He heads down the stairs, eager to have some coffee and breakfast, and knowing that if he’s up, Jack is probably already in the kitchen. But Jack isn’t in the kitchen. Riley is. She’s cradling a cup of coffee that isn’t steaming and the dark circles under her eyes speak of a sleepless night. Softly, he pads into the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Long night?” he asks.

Riley shrugs, her eyes still locked on the nearly full cup of coffee. “Not really. Why’d you ask?”

“Because you look like crap. And because I know what it looks and feels like not to sleep all night because you can’t.”

Riley looks like she’d rather slink out of the room and catch the next bus to Siberia than have this conversation. She swirls her coffee cup but makes no effort to drink it.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Mac prompts.

Riley shrugs. “I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”

Jack bounds down the stairs. “Morning, spy kids. How’s the weather?”

“Cold, actually,” Mac replies, giving Riley a side eye that he knows she sees but chooses to ignore. “It’s twenty-three out and supposed to snow again in another couple of hours.”

Jack makes a face and beelines for the coffee maker. “Aren’t you glad you’re done with SERE? It’d suck balls to be out in that crap.”

Riley forces something that approximates a smile. “Yeah, the cold was definitely not my favorite part.”

Jack catches Mac’s eye, nodding subtly to Riley in askance. Mac’s eyes track to the front door and then back to Jack as if to say, “Get out.” 

Jack pours some milk into his coffee and then puts the carton back in the fridge. “You know. I really wanna use that hottub on the back deck after sitting on a plane and in a car all day yesterday, and damned if I didn’t forget my swim trunks. I think I’m gonna head into town here in a bit and try to find some. You guys make me a grocery list and I’ll pick up whatever we need while I’m out.”

Mac and Jack draw up a preliminary list of nonsense items that they don’t particularly need. Riley adds nothing to the conversation. She barely even looks up when Jack does finally leave. By then, it’s already beginning to snow again.

“Still thinking about taking that walk?” Mac asks.

Riley looks up, considers the snow for a moment, and shakes her head. “No, I think I’ve had enough of that.”

Mac nods and looks down at the dinner table where they’re still sitting. “Riley, I know how intense resistance training is. I also know how easy it is to forget that it’s role play. It feels real, the hurt is real, the fear is real, and sometimes you just forget. And I know that prison wasn’t easy — I barely made it a week, but you had to survive two years. So there’s no shame if going to SERE brought up some trauma. But you need to talk about it. This won’t get better on its own.”

Mac closes his mouth forcefully, fully aware of his tendency to ramble, and he waits. Riley just stares at her coffee which is now definitely past palatable given how long it’s been languishing in her mug. There’s something going on, Mac knows there is, but as the silence drags on, he wonders if their relationship is still too new for her to open up about all this.

“It- prison was hard but- When I was a kid, before Jack ever came around, my dad used to hit me and my mom. He was an alcoholic and a degenerate gambler and an overall piece of shit. He’d come home drunk, on a losing streak, and yell at mom for buying groceries or paying rent. Something stupid because it was all her fault the money was gone instead of his for being bad at poker. 

“So when I went to prison, I already knew how to keep my head down. I already knew how to take a hit. It wasn’t new. Living in fear, locked in your room, having your food rationed out, knowing that every move, every look, every step could be grounds for a beating — I grew up like that until Jack showed up and beat the hell out my dad.” Riley shakes her head and closes her eyes.

“We had to let them jerk us around, hit us, get in our faces and talk shit. And goddammit if I haven’t said a thousand times that I’m not gonna take that anymore. But it was finish the program or have Patty send me back to prison, and that’s a real clear choice on which one you want, you know? So I let them and it was like being a kid all over again. I swear I could smell the Johnny Walker on their breath, I could hear my mom crying. It was all so real. There was nothing I could do and now that it’s over I feel like, I don’t know, like everything I worked so hard for is gone. I just gave it up. Every time I hit Elwood back, every time I said ‘no, you’re not gonna treat me like that’ to a fellow inmate — and then I just told these guys, ‘go ahead, I won’t stop you.’ What does that make me now, Mac?”

She’s trembling now, the surface of the coffee rippling with the vibrations of her hands. Mac can see now that she’s been holding this in for days, turning it around and around inside her head until it coalesced into something bigger than her childhood abuse or her prison experience. 

“Riley, I don’t approve of the way that Director Thornton lords prison over your head to force you to do things. I think it’s unethical because you get coerced into stuff that you aren’t really comfortable with because the alternative is so terrible. So on a lot of levels none of this was really your choice, and that sucks. 

“It also says nothing about you or who you are. You’re in an impossible situation and all you can do is make the choices that best benefit you even if that means the choice you have to make is a shitty one. That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you pragmatic. It makes you a survivor because you’ll do whatever it takes to retain your freedom, even if it isn’t total freedom. There are plenty of people who couldn’t make it through SERE, even with stakes as high as yours. It’s nothing to sneer at.”

Riley shakes her head, though she’s stopped trembling. “I don't know about that, Mac.” 

Mac decides to change tacks. “Do you let Elwood define you? Do you go through life thinking of yourself as the poor, sad, child abuse victim?” 

Riley looks up finally, her brow furrowed. “Fuck no. Nothing about him defines me,” she says in disgust.

“Exactly, so why does he matter now? You grew up to be so much more than him, why does he get to define you now, when all you’re doing is surviving?” Riley looks down at her coffee again, but this time it’s not the blank stare of avoidance — Mac can see the realization in her face. 

“I don’t know, but I don’t want him to,” she admits.

Mac nods. “I get that. I’m similar to my dad in a lot of ways. My grandpa, Harry, liked to say that he and I were ‘of a similar mind.’ It used to really bother me because I remember my dad liking to repair things, or improvise one thing out of something else. He taught me a lot of science, not that I liked learning it with him — he definitely was not teacher material. 

“For a while, I compared myself to him, but at some point in Afghanistan I realized I didn’t want to be defined by my father. When things happened over there, I ran towards the blast, not away from it. I never left anyone behind, but with my dad, leaving me behind was about the only thing he ever really did.”

Riley nods and wipes her eyes. “You’re nothing like your father. I mean I don’t know him, but you’re not the kind of person who walks out on a kid. You’re always there for the people you care about, no matter what.”

Mac smiles and looks down in embarrassment. “Thanks, Ri. And you know, you’re nothing like your dad. You don’t lie or cheat or blame anything that’s happened on other people. You’re honest and caring. Don’t give him this, too. He tried to take a lot from you as a kid, but you said, ‘no, you’re not gonna treat me like that,’ so don’t let him.”

Red eyed and sniffly, Riley smiles. “I won’t.”

“Good,” Mac says, glad that some of this mess has gotten sorted. He’s not foolish enough to think that one conversation is going to solve her problems, but it’s enough to get her rolling. And maybe more importantly, to let her know that there are people who trust her and care about her. 

They sit at the table until Mac’s back begins to cramp. “Can I take your coffee to the sink?”

Riley hands it over. “Thanks.”

By unspoken agreement, they migrate to the sofa and Mac puts on a documentary about herring migration. The mass spawns that take place in coastal waters are fascinating to Mac, but apparently only to Mac because Riley falls asleep in minutes. She slumps against him, her head on his shoulder, and he readjusts so that they’re both mostly lying down with her head pillowed against his chest. 

The documentary ends and Mac turns off the TV. A lazy day seems in order, starting first with a post-breakfast nap. He texts Jack to come back when ready, but to be quiet. Then, he turns his phone to vibrate and sets it on the end table. 

Mac knows that family isn’t like the Hallmark channel — it’s finding people that he can trust and depend on regardless of biological relation, and he’s relatively sure she feels the same way. There are plenty of people who only care about Mac for what he can offer, but very few who care about him for who he is and those are the people that Mac needs. But as much as he needs that, Riley might need it even more. He hates to see her hurting like this, but given enough time and perspective, Mac knows Riley can get through damn near anything and this time she won’t have to do it alone.


End file.
